I am going through my old posts from Vox, editing them to add categories.

Things I have found out doing this:

a) it’s good to have your Category list in your sidebar. That way, you can click, say, Music, and get all my posts categorised Music. If you click on the category underneath the post, you get all posts from all of WP.

b) quick edit means you can change categories and tags without having to load the edit page. Makes it (as the name suggests) a quick edit!

c) if there is music or video in the post, I am having to add new vids, to replace music and old videos. They still link to Vox. Which is still there saying Vox is closed.

How it works: Write an entry of any length or style using five assigned words. Bold the five words. Tag your blog post with ‘5wordchallenge’ and any other tags you wish to add. Feel free to pingback to this post or provide a link to your entry in comments.

This week’s words were chosen by Ross: monochrome, stilted, affluent, trestle and anachronism

If you’d like to select words for an upcoming challenge, chat with MsRedPen on her blog, DM her on Twitter, or send a message through the Vox Diaspora Yahoo! group or the ExVox forum.

I am in The Forwards, looking at this anachronism from my past. The mattress resting on the trestle is as battered as I remember. In those less affluent times, it was my bed for many years. I would pull the mattress from under Aunt Flo’s bed, get the two trestles from the side of the wardrobe, together with a sheet of plywood. First the plywood, then the mattress went on the trestles. I could not sit on my bed – the mattress overhung the plywood by 6 inches or more all the way round. So I tended to sleep curled up in a ball in the centre of the bed, a habit which remained into adulthood and ultimately led to my divorce.

My ex came from a family fallen on hard times through gambling and a stilted awkwardness. He saw me as someone who would save him. He had a tendency to see the world in monochrome, for people to be either his salvation or his damnation. When he realized I would not, could not, save him, I became his enemy so quickly that even I, who had been expecting this turnaround, was amazed at the speed with which he expunged me from his life.

It was a bitter divorce. Even though I agreed to all his demands except one, gave up money and possessions as though they were unimportant, he still could not accept that I would not let him take Aunt Flo’s house. “It needs too much work”, he would say, “Let me pay for it, and you can buy a new house”. He wanted to sell the land for redevelopment; I wanted to cling to the only bit of my past remaining.

So I start again, back in this place, this house. I toss the mattress into the garden to wait for the bin men to come; I may want to hang onto my past, but that doesn’t include stained, smelly mattresses!